


journeys end in lovers meeting

by AshDoesFandom, cheesecakesandlovesquares (AshDoesFandom)



Series: that in black ink my love may still shine bright [3]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: (like almost zero angst tho), 3k words of my adrinette agenda, Adrien's a hot mess, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Gabriel Agreste is a dick, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, Making Out, Marinette's a hot mess, Marinette's great at flirting until Adrien flirts back, No Smut, Not Beta Read, Oneshot, Post Reveal, Post-Reveal Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Post-Reveal Pre-Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Sharing a Bed, Tiger Lila Rossi, adrinette with the ladynoir dynamic, and lila rossi's not so subtle crush on marinette, coincidentally Adrien's great at flirting until Marinette flirts back, featuring a tired nino, lila is still a bitch, nino's trying his best ok, post-Lila Rossi Redemption, woke up at 5 and i've been writing this all day, yet - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-02-23 12:29:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23778265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AshDoesFandom/pseuds/AshDoesFandom, https://archiveofourown.org/users/AshDoesFandom/pseuds/cheesecakesandlovesquares
Summary: Adrien chokes out a laugh in disbelief. “You made a Chat plushie?”Marinette grins, leaning in. “And I snuggle with himeverynight,” she says in a singsong voice.Adrien’s face turns beet red. Marinette privately decides it’s a cute look on him.“Cool,” he croaks out, Adam’s apple bobbing. “Quick side note, not to get sidetracked, but any chance I can get a Ladybug one? Like do you take commissions?”
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Marinette Dupain-Cheng & Nino Lahiffe, Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug & Lila Rossi
Series: that in black ink my love may still shine bright [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1690798
Comments: 49
Kudos: 506
Collections: Adorable, Miraculous Revealed Extra





	journeys end in lovers meeting

**Author's Note:**

> welcome to the adrinette agenda fam. if you haven't read the previous fic in the series _from here to now (to back again) _this probably won't make much sense. so go do that. if you already have, then enjoy! :D__

Halfway through breakfast, Lila snatches the fork out of Marinette’s hand before telling her to _go the fuck to bed before you fall face first into your eggs._ There’s a pause where Marinette stares at her blankly for about ten seconds, which apparently is ten seconds too long because then Nino is ushering her out of her chair and pushing her toward his bedroom.

“Shit, she’s right, I don’t know how we let you talk to Alya for three hours without intervening,” he mutters. “That was clearly a bad idea on my part,” he adds, rifling through his dresser drawers for a pair of sweet pants and a nightshirt. He throws them at her and she catches them clumsily.

“What?”

“You look death warmed over, dude,” he replies, looking grim. “When’s the last time you slept.”

Marinette frowns and thinks about it. “What day is it?”

Nino looks very stressed out. “Just go to sleep _please_.”

“But—”

“I’ll keep an eye on Adrien. And Lila,” he adds, glancing toward the door.

Tikki floats into the room, also looking sleepy. “Adrien’s been on the phone with Chloe for two hours anyway,” she tells Marinette. “Let Nino look after things.”

Nino gives Tikki a relieved look before pointing at the clothes he’d thrown at his friend. “Put those on. Go to bed.” He leaves quickly, shutting the door behind him.

Marinette sighs and looks at the clothes he’d given her. The shirt is from a band she’s not familiar with, but the fabric is soft and warm under her touch. After a brief moment of deliberation, she shimmies out of her stained jeans and blouse.

Honestly, she could have done with a shower as well. The Ladybug Cure had taken care of any wounds she’d carried from the battle, but her skin was still married with dried blood and dirt. Too tired to even remember where the shower in Nino’s apartment _was_ , Marinette slid her bra off, chucked it in the corner with the rest of her clothes, and slid the worn shirt over her head.

She left the sweat pants hanging over the desk chair and burrowed into Nino’s bed. Tikki dropped down on the pillow next to her with a yawn.

30 seconds later and Marinette was asleep.

* * *

She wakes up to the sound of whispered arguing. Tikki is nowhere to be found, probably in the kitchen looking for food or talking to Plagg.

“ _Well what am_ I _supposed to do about it?_ ” a familiar voice—Lila, Marinette’s exhausted brain supplies—snaps, tone a level of fury Marinette hasn’t heard since before the two of them became friends.

“Oh I don’t know, maybe _take responsibility for once?”_ Nino sounds mildly annoyed, but nowhere as angry as Lila.

“This _was_ me taking responsibility, asshole. Look, just because you don’t agree with Dupain-Cheng’s decision—”

“Damn fucking straight I don’t. Why the fuck didn’t she use the Horse Miraculous and just grab someone else—someone who _hasn’t_ been lying to us for _years_ —” Nino’s voice rises in volume and anger. The only time Marinette’s ever heard him _that_ mad was whenever Gabriel Agreste came up.

“She’s Ladybug _and_ the Guardian. Are you saying her decision was wrong, Lahiffe?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time.”

 _Ouch_ , Marinette thinks, but privately she agrees. Being Ladybug and the Guardian has been trial and error from the start. Still, hearing a close friend call out her mistakes hurts more than she thought it would. 

Wincing, she stretches her arms and legs, pleasantly surprised to find that they are significantly less sore. Casting her gaze around, she looks for her phone.

“You left it on the couch,” a voice from the door sounds, startling her.

Adrien leans against the doorframe, holding her phone in one hand. He looks _exceptionally_ better than he had 12 hours ago. His hair falls in clean, slightly damp waves around his head and he’s dressed in clothes that are not torn and bloodstained beyond recognition—a pair of Nino’s pajamas, Marinette realizes distantly. There’s a tired smile on his face, but this time it reaches his eyes.

 _“What’s that supposed to mean!?”_ Lila’s shrill voice screeches from the other room.

Adrien winces and hastily closed the door. “They’ve been going at it for about an hour now,” he says, sitting on the side of the bed and handing her the phone. “I’ve tried to intervene, but.” He shrugs. “You know Lila.”

“Yeah,” Marinette croaks, voice rusty from crying for three hours and then sleeping most of the day.

She presses the home button on her phone. The screen lights up, revealing that she’s been asleep for over 4 hours. Its 1pm, a full 12 hours since her identity had been revealed to her partner and then later to the world. 

Marinette swallows and tosses the phone onto the bed. “I should have known making me sleep was all a ploy to get me out of the way so he could yell at Lila,” she says, only half serious. Then, “Is Nino mad at me?”

“No! Well, maybe a little. You know how everyone’s been about Lila since she fessed up about everything.”

She actually hadn’t been there the day Lila came clean about everything to the class—the lies, working with Hawkmoth—but she remembered the aftermath _vividly._ Alya had frantically spammed her with voicemails until Marinette finally picked up the phone and _that_ was a whole experience within itself. Alya had been hysterical and nearly impossible to calm down and had apologized profusely.

Marinette had received more apologies in that week than in her entire life.

Since then, everyone had been wary about Lila to a degree. Adrien, Marinette, Kim and Rose had still been civil with her and—in Marinette and Rose’s case—friendly, but the rest of the class was somewhere between cold and _furious_. Alya was on the furious end of the spectrum, flatly refusing to have anything to do with the Italian girl.

The fallout between the two friends when she found out Marinette and Lila were going to share a dorm was horrific. It was two months before the clever reporter would even talk to Marinette again, and she still refused to have anything to do with Lila.

Marinette was fairly positive that the reason things were shaky with all of her friends—excluding Chat and Adrien (who were now the same person and wasn’t _that_ a whole other can of worms she hasn’t even opened yet)—was because of Lila.

It had finally hit a point where Marinette was just so busy with college and being Ladybug, that it was easier _not_ to meet up with her friends or text back. So it came to no surprise that the only person from her class that had remained in consistent contact with was, well, Alya. Even Adrien became distant, dealing with his own issues since he’d left his father’s house.

The only problem with this was that Lila—someone she had only planned on being good acquaintances with at worst or kind of friends who shared the same living space at best—soon became the only friend Marinette actually _saw_ day to day.

So yeah, the two were friends now and Marinette had chosen her because she knew that at the end of the day she could _trust_ Lila. Or, at least, trust Lila to be predictable.

Trusting Lila with the Tiger Miraculous had been more of a test of the girl’s character than anything, and Lila had passed with flying colors.

Unfortunately, many of her friends might not see it that way, if Nino’s reaction was to be taken into account.

Explaining this to Alya was going to be a whole other world of fun.

“Mari?” Adrien’s voice broke her out of her thoughts. A hand is on her shoulder, thumb gently massaging her collarbone.

Marinette blinks and shakes her head slightly. “Hi.”

Adrien smiles. “Hi. Where did you go?”

She shrugs, bringing her bare knees up to her chest and looping her arms around them. The covers pool around her ankles. “I don’t know. I think I’m tired.”

“You just slept half the morning away,” he gently replies.

Marinette snorts. “Like, emotionally tired,” she clarifies. “Shit keeps happening.”

Adrien’s smile goes a bit brittle around the edges, much to her dismay. “Yeah,” he looks down at his knees. “We still have to deal with the press and—”

“I’m not doing anything with the press until Alya gets here.”

“Good call, but that means we’re stuck in Nino’s apartment for the unforeseeable future.”

Marinette makes a face. “Maybe we could sneak out tonight?”

“Hmm,” Adrien hums noncommittedly. “Scoot over,” he says, lifting up the covers.

Marinette acquiesces, flopping down on the pillow on the other side of the bed, and Adrien slides in next to her, under the covers. He rolls over onto his side and rests his chin in the palm of his hand, staring down at her. 

“Hi,” he says with a grin.

She feels her cheeks warming slightly. “Hi.” Pause. “I feel like we already said that.”

“Uh huh.” He moves again, over onto his stomach and crosses his arms on the pillow so he can rest his head on them.

“Are _you_ mad at me?”

Adrien’s eyebrows shoot up to his hairline. “Am I— _what_?”

“You weren’t happy about Lila either,” Marinette tries to shrug, but can’t quite manage it from her reclining position. She turns over onto her side to look at him better.

“I was surprised. You don’t really like Lila.”

Marinette makes a face. “I mean, I don’t _not_ like her.”

“You _hated_ her in school, Mari,” Adrien reminds her. “I think Alya and I had to hold you back from attacking her on more than one occasion.”

“Things change. _People_ change,” Marinette says quietly, not meeting his eye.

Adrien goes quiet and Marinette realizes that they haven’t addressed the elephant in the room. Between Adrien bleeding out in her arms and Hawkmoth being _his father_ , the two haven’t had the chance to actually talk about the fact that they are _each other’s partners_ and are friends in both their superhero lives and civilian lives.

Oh yeah and there’s also the fact that Chat Noir used to have feelings for Ladybug and Marinette used to—still does?—have feelings for Adrien Agreste. 

Yeah no, it’s too awkward.

“We should probably go make sure they don’t like, burn down the building, or start using the Miraculous to fight each other,” she rambles, pushing the covers off.

“Mari—”

“I mean, Lila’s a pathological liar and Nino has deeply suppressed anger issues. Leaving the two alone is probably a bad idea.”

“Are we really not going to talk about it?”

She stops, one foot on the ground, one still on the bed. Adrien hasn’t moved from his relaxed position, but his shoulders are tense and he’s not making eye contact with her.

Marinette slides back onto the bed and sighs. “I guess we should.”

“I mean, I understand if you’re angry—”

“Wait _what_?”

“But I swear I didn’t know Father was Hawkmoth!” Adrien says, sitting up. “Trust me, if I had known I’d have—”

“Wait wait wait, shut up,” Marinette says.

“But—”

“No seriously,” she puts a hand over his mouth. “Shut up. You’re my partner, dumbass. I know you didn’t know.”

“ _Oh_.” Adrien’s voice is muffled by her hand. Marinette drops it. “So we’re good?”

“Duh,” Marinette says, rolling her eyes. The familiar gesture—seen so often on Ladybug—makes Adrien relax. “You literally jumped in front of an Akuma for me last night. What, you think 5 plus years of being best friends and partners is automatically going to go away just because your dad happens to be our arch nemesis?”

The look on Adrien’s face says that _yes_ he did think that and it only serves to make Marinette angrier at Hawkmoth—Gabriel.

She really wished it had been _her_ who’d kicked him in the head, but she’d been a little tied up trying to get stolen Miraculous back and Emilie Agreste’s sudden resurrection. 

“We’ve literally been fighting my _whole family_ for the past six years,” Adrien says, looking down at his pajama-clad knee. “I wouldn’t exactly be shocked if people thought—”

“You’re not your father, Adrien,” Marinette says, voice hard. She deflates slightly at her kitty’s flinch, but presses on, voice softer. “I never thought—Adrien, obviously you weren’t working with him, I mean _your face_ when he detranformed, I—” Marinette breaks off, shutting her eyes tightly. The memory of Chat’s—Adrien’s face as Hawkmoth dropped his transformation, just before taking the unified combination of Plagg and Tikki was something that she would never forget.

“Obviously you weren’t working with him, _dumbass_ ,” she says softly. “And I will kick anyone’s ass with the power of all the Miraculous combined if they say you were.”

Adrien’s face does something complicated, like he’s trying to smile but can’t quite manage it. In the end he sighs, falling into a reclining position on the bed again. “Cool.”

“Cool,” Marinette replies, giving her partner a strained smile. Pause. Then, “Do _you_ want to talk about it?”

“Not really no,” Adrien says lightly, not looking at her. “Unless you’re talking about how we’ve had the hots for each other for years and didn’t know it.”

Marinette feels her face go a shade of crimson red. “I—you can’t just— _what_?!”

A pair of mischievous green eyes meet her own as her partner graces her with a familiar cheeky smile. “Oh yeah, Alya may have mentioned that you used to have a thing for me.”

Marinette resists the urge to scream into a pillow. “I’m going to kill Alya.”

Adrien chuckles. “Relax, I mean, it’s not as if you still have a crush on me, right?”

His voice is far too casual for the question to be anything but. And there are two ways Marinette can respond to it. She could laugh if off and pretend that she’d been over him since she and Luka had gotten together or—

Or.

Marinette drops her chin into the palm of her hand, hovering over her blonde partner not unlike how he’d lain next to her a few minutes ago. She forces the Ladybug side of her to keep her voice steady.

“And if I did?”

He swallows loudly, eyes wide, pupils dilated—reminiscent of his leather clad alter ego. “Then I would probably tell you that I used to have a Ladybug shrine when I lived with my father and still have every gift Marinette ever gave me.”

“Cool. Then I would probably tell you that I still have pictures of Adrien Agreste on my childhood bedroom’s walls and sleep with a handmade Chat Noir plushie at night.”

Adrien chokes out a laugh in disbelief. “ _You made a Chat plushie?”_

Marinette grins, leaning in. “And I snuggle with him _every_ night,” she says in a singsong voice.

Adrien’s face turns beet red. Marinette privately decides it’s a cute look on him. “Cool,” he croaks out, Adam’s apple bobbing. “Quick side note, not to get sidetracked, but any chance I can get a Ladybug one? Like do you take commissions?”

Her grin, if anything, gets wider. She scoots in closer, grin turning into a smirk as her hair, falling loose over one shoulder, brushes across the side of his face eliciting a _noise_ from the back of his throat.

“Are you saying you wanna cuddle with Ladybug every night?”

Adrien's face is something between painfully turned on and completely terrified. “I mean. I wouldn’t be opposed to it— _mpf,”_ his voice turns into a muffle squeak as Marinette leans in and offers him a quick peck on the lips.

It was barely anything, just a brief brush of lips, but Adrien stares at her, shell-shocked, face white—like he’s never been kissed before, which was very clearly, _obviously_ not true because Marinette had seen him and Kagami sucking face at prom. So. 

“Oh. That’s what it was supposed to feel like,” he says in a small voice.

“Sorry, was that not—” Marinette’s uncertain apology was cut off as Adrien suddenly surged up, capturing her lips with his own.

It’s slightly messy, and definitely off center. The two are exhausted from the past day’s events and Adrien is recovering from both physical and mental trauma, but there’s a spark—a _fire_ —burning low in Marinette and she can’t bring herself to stop. It feels good, but it’s far from perfect. Marinette hasn’t showered in about a day and Adrien’s lips taste of bitter coffee Nino gave him that morning.

Still, as her partner cups her face in his calloused hands and tilts her head slightly before swiping his tongue along the seam of her lips, Marinette decides it’s absolutely perfect in all of its imperfections.

Adrien certainly seems to think so. He deepens the kiss slightly as she parts her lips for him. One of his hands leaves her face to slide down her side and rest on her hip. Marinette takes this as an invitation to wrap her hands around his shoulders and straddle his lap.

Her partner makes an appreciative noise in the back of throat and gently strokes the inside of her mouth with his tongue. Marinette feels something complicated finally settle inside of her.

The world ended last night.

The world ended and she put it back together and now she’s kissing her partner in his best friend’s bed. It’s ridiculous and so on brand for them that she finds herself laughing.

Adrien pulls away, much to her disappointment, but it’s only to smile down at her bemusedly. “Am I that bad?”

“We’re in _Nino’s bed_ , Kitty.”

He makes a face that sets her off again. “Yeah, I’m not fucking you in my best friend’s bed.”

Marinette’s laughter cuts off abruptly as she bluescreens for about a second at the implications of _that._ But then her brain catches up with the sound of the bedroom door opening.

“Damn straight, you aren’t,” Nino says, staring them down, deadpan. “I just washed those sheets.”

“Nino!” Marinette shrieks, untangling herself from the amused boy she’s sitting on. “We just—we were—”

“Yeah, I know. And you can do that at Lila’s apartment, not mine.”

“They can do _what_ at my apartment?” Lila’s shouts from the kitchen.

“Fuck,” Nino shouts back.

“The only person fucking Dupain-Cheng at my apartment will be me!”

Nino snorts in response, but looks grudgingly amused.

Underneath her complete mortification, at both the topic and being caught with Adrien's tongue down her throat, Marinette is simultaneously relieved and horrified that the two now seem to be getting along. She buries her face in Adrien’s shoulder, her embarrassment momentarily soothed by Adrien’s loud laugh and his hand rubbing at her back comfortingly. He tucks her face in his neck and drops his chin on top of her head.

“Speaking of which, how long are we here for? I mean, I really appreciate you letting us stay, man, but all three of us can’t stay in your apartment until Alya gets back.”

“We need to call a Team Meeting,” Lila agrees, voice closer. She must be standing in the doorway with Nino. “Figure out if you’re going with a cover story or the truth. And then you need a game plan with how we’re going to approach Emile.”

“One thing at a time,” Nino sighs. “I don’t have room for all of you here, so someone’s going to have to stay at Lila’s.”

“Mari can stay with me,” Lila says, voice too casual. Marinette turns her head to view the girl. It’s the first time she’s referred to Marinette as anything but _Dupain-Cheng_ since they’d become friends. Marinette feels something in her heart warm.

“I mean, I’m not taking _him_ home with me,” the girl adds, giving Adrien a critical once over. “I’d rather _not_ deal Adrien complaining every day about not being able to see Marinette. I already deal with it from her on a daily basis.”

“Shut up Lila,” Marinette mutters, face warming.

Adrien, asshole that he is, just grins at Marinette in response. “You like me.”

She raises an eyebrow, meeting his gaze head on. “And you like me.”

“He’s always liked you,” Nino interjects, sounding exasperated in a way only best friends are. “He was just too in love with other you to admit it. But yeah, he was committing emotional adultery with both sides of you.”

“Nino, shut up,” Adrien mutters, cheekbones dusted crimson.

“You love me,” Marinette decides, brain too tired and overwhelmed to think of why it might not be a good idea to break into declarations of love at this very moment.

There’s a pause where their friends go completely silent and Adrien stares at her with wide eyes.

Then,

“Yeah.” Adrien’s eyes—that perfect shade of green that’s always been her favorite—soften into something undefinable. He looks at her and suddenly it’s like he’s seeing her for the very first time. Not as Marinette. And definitely not as Ladybug. But as both of them, two halves of the same whole. “Yeah, I really do.”

And for the first time since possibly the dawn of time, a Chat Noir—her black cat—is in luck. Because Ladybug very much loves him too.

* * *

  


  


**Author's Note:**

> i was supposed to write a multi-chaptered sequel dealing with the aftermath of everyone knowing their identities and meeting emile, but here instead have 3k words of adrien and marinette being a hot mess


End file.
